What Happened to My Profession?

Car journalist were – once upon a time – car guys. They were not Safety Nags, indistinguishable from Ralph Nader or Joan Claybrook.

Today, they are indistinguishable. Might as well be Ralph. Or Joan.

Keith Crain, for example. He is the editor of Automotive News – which isn’t really. It would be more accurate to style it, Automotive Hate – because Crain doesn’t much like cars or driving them.

He likes saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety.

And wants more of it to be mandated. Automated emergency braking, for instance. This is technology which uses radar or other proximity sensors to detect another car or object within the orbit of a vehicle; if the driver does not brake when the computer/programming thinks he ought to brake, the computer/programming will apply the brakes automatically. Peremptorily. Usually when there is no need to do so – the object in the path of the vehicle being (typically) astronomical units distant.

The system is set up to brake like a glaucomic old lady with no depth perception or capacity to judge time-distance relationships might.

“This technology has not only been developed, but it is offered on many vehicles today. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Insurance Institute for Highway Safety have a voluntary agreement with 20 automakers to standardize automated braking by 2022.

The problem is that automated braking is mainly sold as an extra-cost option or as part of a cruise control system, i.e., adaptive cruise control. IIHS estimates that only 1 percent of registered vehicles on the road today have automated braking.

In my opinion, if an automaker has developed automatic braking and can install it as an option, then it can make the technology standard on all its vehicles.

If it adds to the cost of the vehicle then so be it. Just raise the price of the vehicle!

I don’t know of any company that offers as optional equipment seat belts or airbags or any of the other life-saving devices that have been developed over the years.

There is something wrong with a company having the ability to save lives and choosing not to do so. The driving public deserves all the latest safety systems available.

The government will eventually mandate such systems anyway. Car companies that do not offer these systems as standard are making a big mistake.”

Italics added.

This Clover isn’t satisfied that the saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety technology he personally would like to have in a car is freely available to those who would like to purchase it. He is demanding everyone be forced to buy it – and if “it adds to the cost of the vehicle, then so be it . . . just raise the price of the vehicle”!

Of course!

Try to imagine a car journalist – Brock Yates, for instance – urging such a thing. As opposed to this porcine pile of authoritarian collectivism.

The most amazing thing, though, is how unconscious this Crain guy is about his Coercive Wet Nursing. It is a measure of just how saturated the culture has become with both coercion and wet nursing.

The casual insolence of the dude is absolutely halting.

You don’t get to choose. Crain, et al will simply decree. You, of course, get to pay.

How does he differ from other coercive utopians, such as Ralph and Joan? What is the point of having “journalists” such as Crain, who might as well be Public Citizens like Ralph and Joan?

The ironic thing – which probably does not occur to Crain, et al – is that their amen-cornering of coercive utopianism is why the car industry is dying. Why their jobs will go away along with it.